Resumes

Resume Appearance

When you’re reading a newspaper or a magazine, your eye usually gets pulled to the articles with the clearest layout or the ads with the cleanest design – even before you begin reading them. Keep this tendency in mind when laying out your resume, as well. In a sense, your resume is an ad, and you are the product, as inhuman as this may sound. Provide the person reading your resume with a simple, clean layout, and draw their eyes in before they have a chance to think twice.

White Space

You don’t have to hire a professional designer, but make sure that text doesn’t cover the entire page. Also, don’t shrink the margins, especially at the top. Unless you are applying for a very high-level position, keep your resume to one page.

Don’t estimate the importance of white space
when considering the appearance of your resume

Formatting

Insert line breaks and indents to organize the information. Remember to check these stylistic variations for consistency. Use bullet points to break up information and make the resume far easier to read

Highlighting

Use different font types and styles for headings and sub-headings (e.g. bold, italics) to visually show structure. However, don’t go below size 10 font. Also, avoid excessive highlighting, such as caps, which is difficult to read, and underlining, which is often unnecessary. Specifically, it’s best to highlight headings, and the effectiveness of additional highlighting varies. Be consistent.

To get a glimpse of how your employer will look at your resume, hold your resume upside down and view it at a distance to determine if catches your attention at a glance.